Taking aspirin every day could be helping more than just your heart health
A team of researchers out of Taiwan followed 148,739 women who had been diagnosed with diabetes to ultimately determine a correlation between a lessened risk of breast cancer when aspirin is taken over a long period of time.
“Women with type 2 diabetes have an increased risk of breast cancer, and these results suggest that the same low-dose aspirin that many of these women take to prevent cardiovascular disease may also help reduce their risk of breast cancer,” explains Dr. Susan G. Kornstein, editor-in-chief, Journal of Women’s Health.
The study was published in the Journal of Women’s Health. The findings are noteworthy because in the US alone, 1 in 10 women (older than 20) will be diagnosed with diabetes, according to the Office of Women’s Health.
Of those women who have diabetes and took a low-dose aspirin every day, their breast cancer risk was seen to decrease by 18 percent over 14 years. The reduced risk was significantly larger – at 47 percent – for women who took higher doses of aspirin, as prescribed by their physicians.
The exact correlation between aspirin use and breast cancer risk still need to be further explored, according to the researchers, but this is a good start and silver lining for women diagnosed with diabetes.
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